


blink back to let me know

by volti



Series: La Joconde [2]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: F/F, F/M, Falling Out of Love, First Dates, Lukanette, Platonic Relationships, Post-Silencer, Synesthesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2020-02-07 06:29:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18615025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/volti/pseuds/volti
Summary: Marinette has a week before her (second, sort of) first date with Luka. A lot of feelings can happen in a week.A lot of un-feelings can happen, too.[Post-Silencer, but no spoilers. Companion fic toYour Phone is Sufficiently Charged, but can mostly stand on its own.]





	blink back to let me know

**Author's Note:**

> hi my name is sahar omnistruck and i was so consumed with silencer that i wrote almost 17,000 words of lukanette fic in two weeks
> 
> oh God i'm so sorry

**[Monday]**

Monday. Morning. Is. _Awesome._ And if it weren’t for yesterday, Marinette would think she was getting sick for enjoying it so much.

It starts almost the usual way, except every so often, like when she’s washing her face or pausing during breakfast, she remembers the extra time she spent at Juleka and Luka’s house after rehearsal. They come to her in little flashes—the guitar, the colors, the touch to her face or her hair or her hand—and each time, her stomach flips on itself. It’s a miracle she can keep the food down, but she’s probably already burning it off with how she flits around the apartment getting ready for school, or bouncing her leg during the moments she has to sit still. And it’s not even because of Lila or Chloe this time, and she doesn’t have to take anything slow.

Life goes pretty fast when all the exciting things hit you at once.

On her way down to the bakery, somewhere in between kissing her parents good morning and waiting for Alya to arrive to walk the rest of the way to school, Marinette feels this… buzzing. Bubbling. Like something’s dying to get out, and the only way she can fight it back is to keep moving around, or hum to herself, or tap her toes or rock back and forth. It’s weirdly artistic, and a little gross, but she can’t stop the mental image of opening her mouth and letting a whole flock of birds fly out.

It’s too early for her body _or_ her brain to be doing this.

“Marinette?” her father calls to her. “What’s the matter? Are you worried about another pop quiz?”

She turns and smiles—“No, no, nothing like that”—and all the birds and butterflies come back with a vengeance and make themselves cozy in her throat and on her lips. Refuse to budge. There’s a long moment hanging between the three of them, but she takes a breath, looks between her parents, and announces, “I have some plans on Saturday afternoon. Would you be okay with that?”

Her parents look at each other, and then back to her. “Of course,” her mother says. “Spending time with Alya?”

“Well…” Marinette rubs the back of her neck. “No…”

“Then, does Kitty Section have another rehearsal?” her father offers.

“No, not that either.”

“Something for school?”

“No, no, it’s…” Marinette rocks back and forth on the balls of her feet, looks away with a nervous smile she tries and fails to hide. She can already feel the heat of a blush spilling across her cheeks. “I, um. I have a date.”

There’s a spell of quiet in the shop, but she can practically hear the way her mother’s face lights up. The only issue—which isn’t exactly an issue—is that before she can explain herself, Alya arrives and pokes her head in to make herself known. She snaps to attention, and everything starts happening too fast again, and she promises that yes, she’ll explain everything later, but at least the butterflies and the birds are gone for now.

She just hopes her parents don’t think she has a date with Adrien Agreste. Or with Chat Noir. And more than that, she hopes her father’s really, _really_ learned his lesson about who’s allowed to like her, and who’s allowed to hurt her. Even if she’s still sort of learning about that herself.

She has to count her blessings that Alya doesn’t ask very much about what went on after rehearsal, and instead spends most of the walk to school talking about an upcoming group project that, really, they’re all sort of dreading. Because it doesn’t matter how much they enjoy Miss Bustier’s class; they _don’t_ enjoy going harebrained at 10PM the night before the due date because one person isn’t delivering any of what they’re supposed to.

It’s on the school steps, when Alya’s saying something about how _Maybe you’ll get lucky this time and Miss Bustier will take pity on you for having to work with Chloe and Sabrina before_ , that Marinette’s phone buzzes in her pocket. Confused and surprised, she fishes it out, and it lights up with a text message notification.

_morning, ma-ma-marinette. look up._

Luka.

Yeah.

The boy she _actually_ has a date with.

Which she still hasn’t told Alya about. And which, therefore, has probably lost her some serious Best Friend Points. Or is about to. But that’s a can of worms she’s not totally ready to pop open on a Monday morning. So she looks up, into the school courtyard, and there he is, sitting by the stairs, keeping to himself with a notebook in his lap and his guitar case at his side. He watches her through his bangs—which is really the only way he’s ever watched her, and she’s never once minded it—and smiles warmly, raising two fingers in a quiet, casual salute.

She has more blessings to count when Nino arrives and takes up most of Alya’s attention—she didn’t mind it much when the two of them started dating, for more reasons than one, and she minds it even less now. At least it lets her slip into the school building relatively unnoticed, and by the time she reaches the empty space next to Luka on the bench, she’s beaming so much her face hurts.

“What’re you working on?” she asks. She leans a little closer, tries to peek over his shoulder, but he’s too fast; the notebook is snapped shut and away as soon as she so much as sees the dark lines on the paper.

“A song.” He says it so simply, as though he ever works on anything else. (Well, he does; it’s just that music consumes him so much that she can hardly ever see him doing anything else.) “I told you I had that one I was planning on writing.”

“Well, yeah, but that was ages ago.”

“Music never stops, Marinette,” he says, like he knows the way he says her name is part of the whole reason it doesn’t stop, and he gets to his feet, looking around the courtyard. “Can I walk you to class?”

Class is only up one floor, and Marinette still has to go to her locker and mentally prepare herself for the day. But she glances toward the school entrance, where the rest of her classmates are starting to pour in, and manages a shy nod.

She’s always known Luka to be patient, to let most everything slide like water off a duck’s back—creative theft and threats from an industry bigwig excluded. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise to her when he waits as gentle and unimposing as she does while she gets her life together, drumming her fingers against her locker and mumbling her usual _You can do this_ mantra. It’s a little different, with Tikki so present but so silent in her pouch when she’d usually be Marinette’s cheerleader, but it’s a price she’s willing to pay, just for today. And he looks so… enamored with her besides. Not exactly the worship-the-ground-you-walk-on, fantasize-about-our-two-story-house-and-pet-hamsters kind of expression. Just a willingness, which he must have always had, to wait for her.

“I’m looking forward to Saturday, you know,” he mentions offhand; they’re walking so slow she can feel her feet dragging all the way to her classroom, but it’s another thing on this growing list of what she doesn’t mind, because a pace like this only means she gets to spend a little more time with him. To watch him lean so casually against the wall, which he’s somehow able to do even without his guitar. To stretch out the seconds until the bell rings.

“Oh—yeah! Me, too!” At least with Luka she can carry a conversation in a bucket, but he doesn’t make her any less nervous. Fluttery. It’s a different flock of birds when he’s around, a different swarm of butterflies. She doesn’t bother to tell him just yet that her parents are probably biting their nails at home, dying to know everything about him. Because it’s only Monday, and that seems more like a solid Thursday conversation, when she’s biting her nails, too.

Luka laughs to himself, somewhere under the sound of the homeroom bell, and says, “I’d better let you go.” But before he disappears down the hall, he makes it a point to reach for her hand, grasp her fingers in his for just a whisper of a moment. Just the way he played her in the solitude of his room. The windows aren’t so low that her classmates could peek out and see the touch, but they are wide enough that anyone could see how he presses his fist to his lips before he turns on his heel and leaves her dumbfounded.

Luka Couffaine. He really does that, over and over again.

From inside the classroom, Miss Bustier clears her throat in that gentle but firm way that most teachers do. “If you’re ready, Marinette,” she says, “I believe we’re about to begin.”

She slinks in, to the tune of the other students snickering around her, and she keeps her eyes trained on her desk and her body huddled up as Miss Bustier calls roll. The one blessing she missed, though—which isn’t quite a blessing today—is that her name and Alya’s are so close together in the alphabet. And as soon as she mumbles that she’s here, Alya leans over and hisses to her.

“Tell. Me. Everything.”

———

**[Tuesday]**

She waits a day and a half. Mostly because it’s hard to give details when you’re being hounded for them on all sides to the point that you can’t remember much of anything. And also because being cornered at lunch by no less than three of her girl friends is as inevitable as their presence, which could probably bore holes into her very skin. Even Juleka is in on it, which shouldn’t be surprising considering she’s been as invested as the others in Marinette’s general love life and the hijinks she actually lets her friends in on. And also considering that the boy in question is her literal brother.

But she isn’t the first to corner Marinette. And she’s not the first to bring it up. It’s Alya, true to the twin virtues of being a best friend and a cheeky gossip.

“I said,” Alya says, “Tell. Us. Everything.”

They’ve got Marinette surrounded at a table in the cafeteria, wearing her down with sheer silence and eye contact until she cracks. She doesn’t tell them absolutely everything, because they don’t need to know everything and because they’d never know the difference. But she tells them the important things. What Silencer told her. What Luka repeated. How long she’s been carrying it, how he taught her how to be quiet with her love and how, maybe, it blossoms more beautifully that way. How it measures out like a song, and how slow it goes, and how truthful it feels the more she thinks about it.

By the time she tells them about how Luka touched her lips, the other girls are in awe. Rose is pressing her hands to her own cheeks with glittering eyes. Alix has her hands on her head, a death grip on her baseball cap. Mylène is practically fanning herself, like she’s never heard anything so romantic. And Alya is clutching her chest like she’s witnessing the demise of the Titanic and the rescue from the Carpathia all at the same time. Only Juleka sits quietly, folding her hands tight, but when she reaches up to brush her hair out of her eyes, it almost looks like they’re sparkling.

The rest of the lunch period is a weird amalgam of lofty plans to doll her up before Saturday, and shot-down intentions to stake out the whole thing, and hissed questions about Adrien that Marinette can’t bring herself to answer for too many reasons. Instead, she steals a glance at Juleka every so often, trying to gauge the atmosphere or her expression. Sometimes she catches Luka’s eye in the meantime; once, he winks at her and returns to his food with a smile, and she spits out her orange juice and chokes on her words when she has to explain to the others why she’s turning so red and why she’s taking a sudden interest in the tabletop.

Just before the bell rings, as the others are clearing their places and gearing up for their next class, Marinette catches Juleka by the wrist and invites her to sit back down again. It’s… strange, how unreadable she is, and Marinette can’t help rubbing the back of her neck and looking around the cafeteria—and, pointedly, not anywhere near Luka. “I just wanted to make sure you’re okay,” she says, “Is it… weird? For you?”

Juleka shrugs with one shoulder. “Why would it be?”

“I mean… it is your brother we’ve been talking about this whole time. If I had an older brother, I’d feel kinda weird if one of my friends thought he was hot. I wouldn’t want to talk about it.”

“You think my brother’s hot?”

Marinette’s face positively burns. “Forget I said that. Please.”

Juleka takes a long pause. Maybe she actually is trying to forget. Maybe she’s thinking. Eventually, she bows her head and picks at her fingerless gloves. “He started painting his nails so people would stop teasing me about it,” she says. “Then he started saying it goes with his look, and that it’s easier to play that way. It comes natural to him now. Same with his hair. But he did it for me first. Now we do it for each other.”

Marinette’s gaze drops to Juleka’s hands. She’s always noticed the polish there as an afterthought, even though the color changes every so often. Today they’re dark purple, though the ring fingers are a pearly silver. “That’s really sweet,” she finally says, soft enough for the conversation to stay between just the two of them. “But why are you telling me something so… secret?”

Juleka looks off to the side for a moment; even across the table, she seems like she’s curling into herself. Like she’s learned to do it before she says anything, especially the truth. “He likes when the people he cares about are happy. Someone’s gotta do the same for him.”

It’s probably the most Marinette has ever heard her say in one go. She can’t tell if it’s honest advice, or if there’s some kind of threat lying underneath, the typical _I’ll kill you if you hurt him_ thing that she’s been at least half-expecting. “Are you… telling me to be that someone?”

Juleka only gets to her feet and gathers her belongings, slinging her bag over her shoulders just as Rose saunters back over and slides their hands together. “That’s not up to me.”

It’s the truth, Marinette knows, but it still doesn’t sit well with her for the rest of the day. It’s only one date. They’re only taking it as they go. She’s decidedly _not_ doing the fantasy marriage thing. But she did… say some pretty poetic things about Luka. More than she’s ever been able to string together about Adrien—which, nine times out of ten, has devolved into some lovesick garble and her head in her hands in defeat. And she did make it sound like, underneath it all, she loves him. Or is starting to.

Maybe that’s why Juleka said it in the first place. Because Marinette has enough love in her heart that she doesn’t really know what to do with it all.

But that almost sounds self-congratulatory. So at the very least, she won’t say it out loud.

On the way out of class, Marinette stops her again, at the top of the stairs, and tugs her to a nearby corner. “Is this about…” she begins, and then flicks her gaze toward Adrien, who’s smiling and waving goodbye, sweet and polite as ever. Admittedly, it still makes her heart flutter a little, but it’s not the blood-pumping, butterflies-under-the-skin thing that takes her by surprise every single time.

Juleka follows her gaze without a sound, and the smile fades from Adrien’s face, like they know they’re talking about him to some degree. He seems to let it roll off of him, though, and returns to whatever conversation he’s having with Nino and Alya. “I just want Luka to be happy, too,” she finally mumbles, and as simple as it is, it feels like it only confuses Marinette even more.

———

**[Wednesday]**

She thinks about what Juleka said for… a while. A long while. Even through her homework assignments, even through her hobbies, even through dinner with her parents and skygazing on her balcony and staring at the ceiling while sprawled out on her bed. And even into the next morning, as she’s staring blankly into her locker like it’s a void she’s sort of hoping will swallow her up. It’s not that it bothers her, exactly. It’s more like it creeps at the edges of her brain and turns everything inside-out when it was already upside-down to begin with.

It’s not that she doesn’t like Luka, she tells herself over and over, almost as frequently as the mantra that Tikki chirrups through with her. She does. She does like him. Saturday wouldn’t be happening if she didn’t. It’s just also true that the other girls have seen her lose her mind over Adrien more times than she can count, and turning around and agreeing to a date with another boy—with Juleka’s _brother_ , which is a whole can of worms she hasn’t even dared to open—

Good God. She’s probably the worst compass ever fashioned.

Is she being fickle? Is she even fully over Adrien, when he still makes her smile so wide her face hurts just from looking at her?

Is she hurting two people? Three? Herself? Is—

“I never pegged you as the type to go gooey for punk-type boys.”

The voice startles Marinette into slamming her locker door shut, right on her thumb, and she has to suppress a shriek of pain just to save a little face. It’s as she’s nursing her sore hand that Kagami—of all people—takes a seat beside her and examines her hand a little more closely.

“I’ve seen worse,” she says by way of a less surprising greeting, level as ever. If it’s supposed to be encouraging, it’s not working. “You can walk it off with an ice pack.”

Marinette looks at her, almost dumbfounded. She doesn’t draw her hand back right away. In fact, none of her draws back, immediately or otherwise. “What are you doing here?”

“I have a locker,” Kagami says like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, and busies herself with getting ready for the day. “And you look like you’re hesitating again. Didn’t I tell you not to?” And then, more to herself even though Marinette can hear it clear as day, “Honestly, how many times can you fall…”

“Do you have, like, a sixth sense for this?”

“Only the typical five.” Kagami toes her locker shut. “But catching your finger in a door is clumsy even for you. So you must be distracted by something. And if you’re distracted by something, then you’re overthinking something else. It’s practically textbook.”

It can’t really be that simple. Maybe it’s better to change the subject. “I didn’t realize you pegged me as any type of anything.”

Kagami only shrugs. It’s more purposeful, more pointed than the way Juleka does it; it almost makes Marinette feel like she has to come back with something smart to say within seconds, instead of actually listening to the conversation. “I pay attention. I see when some things dwindle away, and when other things surge up. Especially when you make it so obvious. The hardest thing is watching what’s in the middle.”

Marinette’s brow furrows, and she goes after Kagami into the school courtyard, still holding her throbbing hand. “I’m not following. And I’m not obvious.”

Kagami gives her a look.

She falters. “I’m not… that obvious.”

The way Kagami returns to what she was saying before is a swift judgment in its own right. “It’s a surprisingly volatile place, the middle. It’s where everything fluctuates the most. Almost like watching a coin flip in midair. It keeps spinning, and you’ll never know how it lands until it does.” From her perch on the stairs, Kagami watches her closely, like these sorts of truths come as naturally to her as painting nails and dying hair comes to the Couffaines. She heads up soon enough, and her voice fades all the way to her homeroom class. “You look like someone who’s been flipping for a long time. You’re going to have to land eventually, you know. You’d better decide whether you’re heads or tails before you end up with a concussion or broken bones.”

Yes, Marinette decides, even with her hand pulsing with fresh pain. Everyone is out to personally and specifically confuse her.

“You all right?”

Again, she jumps and squeaks, but it isn’t Kagami returning with more unsolicited advice. It isn’t even Luka. It’s Adrien, bending to meet her spaced-out gaze and then dropping his own to her hand. “Sorry,” he says. “You look a little shaken up. Is something wrong? Are you hurt?”

“I—” Marinette swallows hard, and clears her throat, because it’s just Adrien. It’s just Adrien Agreste, checking in on her the way he’d check in on anyone else. “I’ll be fine, just—I just need an ice pack, is all. Locker door, I—” She manages a nervous laugh. “It happens. I’ll be fine.”

“It doesn’t look fine. It’s pretty swollen…” Carefully, Adrien gestures toward her hand for permission, cradles it in both of his own and keeps his attention on her as he turns it this way and that, and she can’t tell if it’s the touch that’s making her feel so feverish, or the dregs of unbearable pain. “I can take you to the nurse’s office.” He doesn’t give her much time to decide—he’s practically already decided for her, and so has the steadily darkening bruise under her thumbnail—and he leads her as cautiously as he can.

It’s… sweet, the things he does for her. The things, these little acts of kindness and service, that made her fall for him in the first place.

It’s when they’re huddled together on the bench, pointedly avoiding bumping knees and elbows and touching thighs while they wait for the nurse to return with an ice pack, that Adrien speaks up first. “You’ve seemed a lot happier lately. More so than usual, I mean.”

Marinette blinks a couple of times, still cradling her hand to her chest. “What do you mean?”

Adrien watches her for a while, in the silence of the office with the shuffle of shoes and distance voices outside, and it almost feels like he’s staring into her soul. Like he’s finding out every little thing she ever felt about him, even the hamsters, and every little thing she ever felt about Luka, even the guitar pick that she’s been trying to fashion into a pendant. It’s as unsettling as it is comforting, and she can’t help shifting in her seat to try and stave off the feeling. But eventually, Adrien shakes his head and rests a hand on her shoulder, and it feels… warm. Like an old friend. And sad like one, too. “Never mind. Whatever it is, I’m happy for you.”

As he pulls back, Marinette takes him by the wrist with her good hand, and she freezes, and she says the first thing she can think of. “Do you think I’m heads or tails?”

Adrien looks at her, adorably confused. “Huh?”

“Uh—” This time, she’s the one to shake her head, a little faster, a little more frantic. “Sorry, that probably makes no sense—”

He laughs, and she knows it too well, because it’s exactly the sort of laugh that came out of him when his umbrella closed on her, and it’s exactly the sort of laugh that lived in everything Luka said when she met him for the first time. And it’s not that the coin stops flipping exactly, in that moment, but when Adrien sits back, she can see one of its sides. “You’re a funny girl, Marinette.”

And her heart twists.

By the time she gets an ice pack and a foam splint for her thumb, Adrien is still waiting for her in the hall, and she’s able to pass off the tears in her eyes as a raw pain and a shock from the cold. It’s just hard to explain to a school nurse—or to the boy who sits in front of you, who tried to get chewing gum off your seat and who lent you an umbrella and who lit up your life by virtue of existing around you—how a coin falls limply on the ground. And how something dies inside of you so suddenly, without having been killed. And how, even though you’ve been ready to kiss it tenderly and say goodbye to it for a while now, you still mourn it for the better part of a day, because what’s left of it still burns a little, and probably never stops.

———

**[Thursday]**

Juleka looks at her thumb when she mumbles, “I’m sorry.”

It’s not like it comes out of nowhere. Everyone’s been asking since yesterday morning whether she’s okay, whether she needs help. Alya joked that maybe it was exactly what Marinette needed to let people do something for her for once, instead of it being the other way around the other ninety-nine times. Chloe tried to pull a fast one with some haughty quip about clumsiness—which is almost funny, because Marinette figured she’d let up on the bullying just from seeing her and Luka around the school together—but the whole class stared her down until she rolled her eyes and scoffed. Kagami said nothing about it when they passed each other in the hallway, but her eyes spoke volumes just before they closed.

Adrien’s offered to help her out here and there, too. Carrying her books or her lunch tray, taking more detailed notes so she can rest her hand, asking if she needs to check in with the nurse. It’s little more than a blackened nail and the occasional dull throb now, but he’s still been eyeing it carefully, like it was his fault it happened at all. And maybe, in some way, it was, but it’s not like he needs to know.

Marinette only shakes her head in the hall, and all too cautiously pries the splint open to show Juleka the damage. “It’s not so bad now. Don’t worry about it.”

Juleka looks down at her shoes. “Not that.”

“Then what?”

“What I said on Tuesday. I’m sorry.”

“Huh?” Marinette cocks her head, flexes her fingers just to feel the blood under them. “Why?”

“Because I…” Juleka sinks down onto a nearby bench. “You’re probably feeling a lot. And it’s confusing. And I shouldn’t have made you feel like you have to figure all that out and make Luka happy.”

Marinette softens at the edges. She has to do a little rearranging with the books in her arms, but it’s worth it just to lend Juleka a comforting hand. “I’m not upset about that. You’re right. It is a lot. And it is confusing. But I didn’t feel like you were pressuring me. I’ve just been doing a lot of thinking recently. And feeling things out, and letting them… well… stop.”

Juleka doesn’t say anything, but her eyes glint with a question, and Marinette shakes her head with a resigned smile. “It’s nice to see how much you care about Luka,” she says. “It’s nice that you want him to be happy. And I really am looking forward to going out with him, if that makes you feel any better about it.”

When Juleka looks at her through her bangs, there’s a quiet understanding living there. Like she can feel all the little changes in Marinette’s heart. It’s almost like how Adrien looked at her yesterday in the nurse’s office, and almost like how Luka watches her all the time. It might just be the most she’s resembled her brother in any way besides their appearance. “You care about him,” Juleka says. “Just be good to him.”

“I will,” Marinette promises, soft but purposeful, just as Rose comes to steal Juleka away.

The rest of the afternoon passes quickly. Alya texts to check on her every so often, even though she’s doing homework with Nino at her place—which can mean a number of things that Marinette isn’t sure she’s ready to hear from a best friend. Luka sidles up to her on his way out and jokes about his sister defending his honor, and he turns his examination of her hand into something so casual she barely notices how intensely he’s looking at it. When she asks what he has planned for Saturday, he winks and says it’s a secret—which either means he’s thought of something so romantic that she’ll hardly be able to handle hearing about it, let alone experiencing it, or that he hasn’t thought of anything at all. And Luka’s enough of a mystery sometimes, and enough of a distraction when he lets her hand slip out of his, that it’s hard to tell which one it is.

Just before she heads out for the day, Adrien stops her on the steps with a hand on her shoulder. He looks almost… timid. Awkward. She doesn’t think she’s ever seen him this way. Not even when he admitted that he’d never been to school, never had any friends. “I hope I haven’t been overbearing,” he says. “You’ve just been so kind to everyone. I thought that… you deserved a little bit of that kindness back.” He rubs the back of his neck and smiles. “You’re a good friend to me, Marinette, for as long as I’ve known you. I just hope I’ve been the same for you.”

 _Friend_ doesn’t sink like a stone in her heart the way it used to. And it doesn’t feel like anything less, anything unimportant or even devastating. It feels as much like an old friend as every touch and look and word he’s given her in these last weeks. Like he’s made for her, sure, and she’s made for him, but in the subtle, powerful way that some people are. Without all the fantasy and romance, without the wedding, without the hamsters. Like he’ll follow her to all her ends this way, and he doesn’t need to sweep her off her feet to do it. He just needs to care for her the way he does, and that will be enough. So she welcomes it all instead, with tears welling in her eyes and falling without restraint, and she buries her smile in his chest and snakes her arms around his waist. It’s quiet between them, even as he hugs her back and gingerly pats her head and asks her why she’s crying, if her hand hurts that much.

“You’re tails,” she tells him without letting go, and her fingers—the good ones—curl into the back of his shirt. “And I’m heads. And I love you, Adrien, in a way I don’t know how to describe anymore, and I’m not asking you to do anything about it. I just need you to know that I care and that I… like you, in my life. I need you to know that that’s how I feel.”

Adrien’s eyes are wide when she pulls back, the way they were way back at the picnic, when she had the audacity to kiss him on the cheek. And he softens in the same way, with a smile that welcomes her home and holds her at the doorway all at once. And before he retreats to his car, he presses his hand to his heart, like that’s where her words live now, and he says, “Thank you for telling me all that.”

It’s as the car’s pulling out that Marinette lets herself laugh and cry all at once. She must look so stupid on the steps, must be toeing the finest line between positivity and the threat of akumatization, but she doesn’t care. She’s feeling. She’s feeling _everything_ , and it doesn’t seem like it’s ever going to go away. She crumples there, and she wipes her eyes with the heels of her hands, and she lets Tikki out to cry with her and pepper butterfly kisses across her cheeks all the way home and in the hours she spends in her room as she realizes that she doesn’t stammer around Adrien Agreste anymore.

When Alya texts back, she doesn’t tell her what happened. Because Alya doesn’t need to know the details or the he-said-she-said. All anyone needs to know is that she’s Marinette, and she thinks she’s learned, and that she loves Adrien Agreste, and he knows it, and she doesn’t have to want to marry him or even date him for it to mean something.

But she has a date with Luka Couffaine on Saturday. And she thinks she wants to date him. And she’s at least starting to think that’s okay.

———

**[Friday]**

Maybe announcing exactly when an important date is about to happen isn’t always the best idea. Particularly when you have two overly doting parents who want to know everything about this person you’re going to see—and still want to know everything when they find out that the person is already a good friend. And particularly when you have several friends who are bent on helping you pick out all kinds of outfits and styles and fragrances for any occasion, which seems like overkill for a second first date with arguably the most mellow boy you’ve ever met.

Still, it has its perks. At least her father is a little more calm about the people she’s interested in, not so invested that he’d turn into another werewolf or cage her in to keep her from ever hurting again. He listens to her, and seems to ask most of the right questions, and she catches him smiling endearingly any time she finds herself gushing just a little too much. Even if she is trying to be measured about it. Maybe it just slips out, and maybe he knows what it’s like to feel things so much you can’t control them because he’s felt all the same things before.

And at least she learns her way around a curling iron and all the clothing she never wears, hiding in the corners of her closet, thanks to Alya knowing her far too well and Alix being small enough to practically fit inside it. Rose and Mylène teach her the ways of light makeup, too, but she won’t bank on using too much of it. She’s never needed a whole lot of it before; she’s gone almost fifteen years without it, and even if Luka is a couple of years older, she doesn’t feel like growing up too fast just yet.

Juleka paints her nails, quiet, purposeful. They’re a shimmering pastel pink by the time she’s done, and she turns away with a bashful smile and an appreciative mumble when Marinette compliments her work.

The good thing is that all this time and all these people keep her from being too alone. Because being alone always means thinking too much, and thinking too much means thinking about crying all over again, and thinking about crying means actually doing it.

The problem is that all the roads seem to land her there anyway. Which, historically speaking, is awfully Roman. And which, for a Friday night, feels awfully pathetic. There’s no reason for her to be misty-eyed. Girls in love in Paris shouldn’t be crying on balconies, even if girls in mourning probably should. It’s just hard to convince herself that she’s mourning when she’s lucky enough to feel what she does, and have it returned the way it is. And it’s hard to convince herself she’s in any sort of acceptance stage when she still can’t kick the hole-in-her-heart feeling that something in her died. That she felt something before, and that some single, indeterminate moment took it away.

“Pretty girls and forehead wrinkles aren’t a good match, you know.”

The voice comes from above, startles but doesn’t scare her. She cranes her head up toward her roof, and purses her lips at the shadow in the moonlight. “Chat Noir? What are you doing here?”

Sure enough, Chat Noir leaps down to perch on the railing of her balcony, though he makes sure to keep a distance, like he’s waiting for her to invite him into her space. “I was in the neighborhood. Thought I’d check up on one of my favorite charges.” He tilts his head, and in the semi-quiet of the city and the nighttime he squints at her. Watches her more carefully than he must have during their plan to capture Nathaniel—no, the Evillustrator—way back when. “What’re you thinking about?”

“A lot.” Little by little, she makes room for him, and sprawls out on the lounge chair. From where she’s sitting, it’s hard to see him as little more than a silhouette in the night, but the fact that he’s there is still… comforting. He’s strangely good at that, when it comes to spending time with her. “But you probably didn’t come all this way to hear about all that.” And she doesn’t even know if she could say all that, or how.

Playfully, he swivels around on the balcony—she’d probably fall if she even thought about trying that—and flicks at one of the cat ears sprouting from the top of his head. “I don’t mind,” he says, eyes glowing and glinting from the string of bulbs above her head. “I’ve got plenty of ears to lend. Say… is your hand okay? It's looking kinda…”

"Don't ask." Marinette laughs, weakly, and sits back. It’s funny, how he comes to her in those little moments when her heart feels the most vulnerable. How he speaks a few words here and there, and somehow they’re enough to unlock the iron grip she thinks she’s had on her feelings. How… thoughtful, he is, in that way that speaks of camaraderie and never really expects anything back.

“So?” Chat Noir gets a little more comfortable on the floor and crosses his legs. For someone so slinky, he sits up straight as a board. “What’s on your mind?”

“I…” She sighs, and looks up at the striped canopy instead of at him. Even if she can feel his gaze boring into her. “I fell out of love. Except not really. I just… think I fell into a different kind. And then, I…” She shakes her head. It doesn’t feel right to say it out loud yet. “Why is love so hard?”

“I couldn’t tell you,” Chat Noir says after a long moment’s hesitation. “I’ve only ever really loved one person.”

Oh. Well. “That’s… You don’t—” She’s already wringing her hands, and she hasn’t even finished the question. “Do you think I’m fickle?”

“Why would I?”

“Because I… love one person one way and another person another way. I think.”

She almost doesn’t want to dare to look at him, but she rolls onto her side anyway. He doesn’t look angry with her, or upset, or even judgmental. In fact, he looks kind of curious. “Are you asking me if I think it’s bad that you care about people?”

“ _No!_ No, I—it’s just weird, I don’t know how to explain it. I just, loved this boy. Like, head-over-heels, mad-as-a-hatter, made-twenty-years-of-birthday-presents love. It’s crazy, right?” It’s too late to stop any of the words now; they flow out of her like ticker tape, like he’s pulling a whole speech out of her inch by inch, until she’s saying everything without knowing exactly how to say it. “I didn’t realize anything, I just—I don’t even know what happened, I… Something died, and it’s not like I don’t care about him, it’s just not the same as it used to be, it just feels like we’re made for each other, but not the way I thought, and maybe I was stupid for telling him, and—and…”

Chat Noir draws his knees to his chest; he hasn’t taken his eyes off of her for a second. If she squints, maybe she can guess that somewhere inside him, he knows exactly what kind of pain she’s talking about. What’s all swirling up in her heart, and what kind of purity is coming out of it. If there’s even any purity to speak of. And if she looks even closer, she might swear she’s seen that look somewhere before. “Someone else happened.”

Marinette curls up tight, guilty, quiet. “Someone else happened.”

He tilts his head again. It’s actually kind of cute. Not that she’ll say it out loud. “You’re telling me a lot, you know.”

“Well, I…” She pauses to gather her words. “If you can keep something like your whole identity a secret from the world, then maybe you can keep my secrets, too.”

He blinks a couple of times, like he’s never been trusted with anything before, or maybe like it was worth venturing out into the world if it meant hearing something like this. “Then?” He doesn’t say it like it’s inconsequential. He says it like it’s important and not the catastrophic thing she’s afraid it is, all at once. “Tell me about them. Boy? Girl? Both? Neither?”

“Boy, he—” She can already feel her face starting to burn, and the adrenaline fluttering just under her skin, and the guilt is gone as quickly as it came. “He makes me feel like… do you know the kind of music you listen to to fall asleep and know you’re safe? That’s how he makes me feel.”

“So you’re in love with him,” Chat Noir says.

And Marinette looks away, and says, “Yeah. I guess I am.”

And then, because Chat Noir is clearly a superhero and sort of a friend and not at all her therapist, he gives her a cheeky grin. “Well, will his wooing skills ever measure up to mine? I did show you that awesome display, after all. You know.” He raises a brow. “That ‘super surprise.’”

Marinette laughs, or tries to stifle one. “Don’t be silly, kitty. That was for _Ladybug_ , not me… What? Why do you look so sad all of a sudden?”

“Nothing, it’s just… That’s what she calls me.”

For a moment, she goes quiet. “Oh.”

Chat Noir gets to his feet, turns toward the moonlight with his chin in his hand. “Maybe something will die in me, too. D’you think it’ll happen?”

“No, I—No, you just…” Carefully, she sits up, moves toward him. She doesn’t dare to touch him, mostly because she’s afraid he’ll jump and perch and leap away like this conversation never happened, but maybe he can feel how close she is. “I think you just have to let your heart do what it needs to.”

He repeats the words to himself once or twice, and his grip on the railing tightens and loosens in turns. _Let your heart do what it needs to._ “Well,” he finally says. “I guess I will if you will.”

Eventually, and after some conversation that’s more deep and wistful than they’re used to, Chat Noir leaves her to herself with a ruffle of her hair. He promises that he’ll take care of her secrets and all these feelings, and that he’ll keep up his end of the bargain, too—so long as she keeps him posted every so often about this boy who supposedly makes her feel like a lo-fi study playlist. She watches after him until the darkness and the distance swallow him up, sends him off with a two-finger salute, and finally lets herself check her messages.

There’s only one, from Luka: _Can I pick you up at 6?_

Chat Noir will let himself if she lets herself. And she’s been learning to let herself for a while.

_Yeah. 6 sounds great._

———

**[Saturday]**

6P.M. on a Saturday evening gives Marinette Dupain-Cheng more than enough time to agonize over appearances and every clumsy thing she’s ever done—including her still-bruised thumbnail, which is at least free of its cast by now—and by the time 5:45 rolls around she’s still not over any of it. Even with her hair down and in loose waves because she still hasn’t figured out what to do with it, even as she tugs at her outfit here and there and wonders if she’s dressing up too much with a pleated skirt or down too much with a pair of sneakers. Or if she’s even dressed for the right occasion—which is hard to figure out when Luka hides most everything, including whatever plans he has to whisk her away, behind a smile and deep blue eyes.

It turns out that five minutes on an under-the-wire video chat with Alya is all the time she has to decide, even after hours of texting and taking selfies for second and third and fourth opinions. Because after five minutes, there’s a knock at the door downstairs, and her father is calling up to her, and oh, God, she can only imagine what sorts of things he must already be talking to Luka about. What kinds of questions he must be asking, what kinds of photo albums he’s pulling out. (Oh, God—not the _bathtub_ photos—) In the last whirlwind moments in her room, she grabs a purse and a jacket, miraculously gets her shoes on the right feet, and lets out a nervous scream-laugh through clenched teeth.

Alya only smiles on the screen, and says, “Well, go get him, girl,” before she hangs up.

Which is a bigger vote of confidence than she’s expecting. And a bigger vote of confidence than she has in herself.

But it’ll grow, in time.

When she fumbles down the stairs, she freezes up under Luka’s gaze—especially because he spends so much time taking her in that she has to call his name for him to snap back to himself. Not that she has much of a leg to stand on; he’s dressed so cleanly, so in-the-middle like her, that she’s pretty sure she forgets how to speak for a moment or two. It doesn’t matter how many times she’s seen him in the past, how many afternoons they’ve spent chatting and riffing and having heart-to-hearts under all the tender jokes. There’s a fine line between the boy on the boat with the Jagged Stone guitar picks, and the boy who’s about to take her out for the evening, and this boy is rooting her to the spot in the best way.

If anything, it feels… typical, of a real first date. Which just might be exactly how it _should_ be.

“Let’s go,” Luka finally says with a warm smile and a nod of his head, and already he’s got his hand on her shoulder as he guides her out. She only has just enough time to toss a glance back at her parents, who are positively glowing with two thumbs up each.

So maybe it will be a good night.

He takes her downtown, and in some fashion or another, he keeps a hand on her—the small of her back, her wrist, between her shoulder blades. He even stops her with an arm in front of her before they cross any streets, and dares to sling an arm around her when they ride the subway in and murmur amongst themselves. “You look good in plaid,” he remarks; the up-and-down he gives her is subtle, much more than the way she keeps trying to steal glances at him, but it’s not entirely lost on her. “And I don’t think I’ve ever seen you with your hair down.”

Slightly horrified, Marinette reaches up, and then starts rummaging through her bag. “I—oh, no, I was supposed to—”

“It looks nice.” It might be a throwaway compliment, or he might be trying really hard not to try too hard to punch her up, but all the same, a wave of relief washes over her as she’s clipping her hair back. “You look nice,” he says, courageous enough to hold her gaze, and there’s no hesitation or fanfare in the way his hand slips into hers as he leads her out of the station and toward a small café.

Her heart flutters, just as quiet as everything between them, and she swallows it down with a smile and squeezes back.

The café is tucked away in the city, a calm little place, almost vintage-looking, with mood lighting and a delicate menu, wood paneling that creaks under her feet and lit-up display cases of sweets. The music over the speakers doesn’t seem like anything Luka would listen to—it’s more like some soft hip hop she’d be better off studying to—until he nods to a stage at the opposite end of the café and murmurs that the owners are nice enough to open it up a couple of times a week to anyone who wants to try their hand at performing. Music, poetry, singing—if you can do it, they’ll allow it. “They’re not the biggest fans of rock,” he tells her over the dull roar of other customers as he tugs off his beanie and pulls out a chair for her.

It makes Marinette laugh as she gratefully takes a seat and studies the menu on the wall from a distance. “But they’re fans of you?”

Luka grins—which makes her jittery all over again—and fishes his wallet out of his back pocket. “You could say that.”

“Well…” She fumbles. “Were you going to perform tonight?”

He hums. Looks to the stage, and back at her. “Maybe another time. I’ve got more important things in front of me.”

Marinette hides it behind a hand, but she’s beaming as she looks away.

No matter how much she insists, he holds her in her seat with a look that’s too pleasant to argue with, and tells her he’s paying and that that’s final. Not because he’s the guy, but because he genuinely wants to. Because he invited her out, and it’s the nice thing to do. Admittedly, it lets her admire him from a distance, lets her let the music in the way he must be so used to already, so that she feels almost dreamy by the time he returns with their food. Under the table, she can’t help bumping knees with him more often than not, partly because they’re sitting so close together and partly because she sort of wants to be this close. Because she’s gotten so used to the touch over such a short period of time that she wants it, if she can help having it.

It’s… _easy_ , to be on a date with Luka. There’s nothing to perform to, beyond the run-of-the-mill first-date anxieties. There are no expectations. There are no fantasies, nothing about destiny, nothing about him being made for her, being the love of her life. It’s a quiet time, in a quiet space, with a boy she likes, who makes good conversation and shares his food with her and looks at her like there are stars in her eyes whenever she laughs or gets excited about anything. And it almost looks like there are stars in his, too, if she looks close enough, because it’s definitely not the lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling. And maybe he got those stars from her.

“What is it?” she murmurs when he looks a little too long with his chin in his hand. She says it like she has to talk around the words themselves just to get them out.

Luka blinks slow, and shakes his head, and then nods toward the door. “What do you say we get dessert to go?”

———

**[Saturday Night]**

“You know,” Marinette says, cradling a box with a mille-feuille and a crème caramel in her lap, “I’m pretty sure _you’re_ supposed to walk _me_ home.”

If she’s a funny girl, then Luka seems like just the funny boy to go along with her. He’s so nonchalant beside her as they sit along the bank of the Seine. “Well,” he shoots back, drumming his fingers along the neck of his guitar as if to prove his point. “I needed something from home.” The houseboat is somewhere in the distance, rocking with the waves, but it’s still close enough that either of them can glance at it, see it if they squint. She prays, to herself, that Juleka or Captain Couffaine can’t see them from over there. “And the river’s quiet at night. You can hear everything here.”

“It’s romantic,” Marinette says without thinking, then claps both hands to her mouth. Heat flares in her cheeks, but even with a nearby streetlight, she’s pretty sure he can’t see the blush. Instead, he tilts his head with a smile, as if to say, _You think so?_ As if that was his goal all along. He fiddles with his guitar pick, and goes back to idle strumming.

She wants to ask him a million questions, and isn’t sure how many of them are worth asking on a first date, whether there’ll be a second date or not. Why did he invite her out if he must have known how she felt about Adrien? Was it all that alone time that made him take the chance? Is he as happy as Juleka wants him to be? Does he know Juleka wants him to be happy? Does he believe in things like destiny, or that certain people are made for one another? Does he think they’re made for each other? Has he ever fantasized about marriage and hamsters? Has he ever been in love? Has he ever felt unfair? Does he love her? Does he really love her?

Instead, she sets their shared dessert box aside, and swivels toward him, and asks, “What color are you playing now?”

Somehow, Luka manages to adjust his beanie in between plucks at the strings. “Pink,” he murmurs without looking up. “It’s strange… I hardly ever hear pink. Only here. Only with you.” He laughs to himself. “You must be rubbing off on all the notes, Marinette.”

“Me? No way, you’re just teasing me.”

“I mean it,” he says. “You have more influence than you know.”

For a while, she lets him play and play, only allows herself to brush her fingertips against his knees every so often, right through the tears in his jeans. Just to feel the touch again, because leaning on him is too inconvenient when he’s creating, no matter how much she wants to do it. Then she says, just over the music, “You know what my papa told me once? He said something like… like, if someone really likes you, then they’d be super nervous around you—that that’s a sign, because they want you to like them.”

“Oh, yeah?” He strums a few chords, soft enough to hang only in the space between them. “Am I not ‘super nervous’ around you?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you super nervous. Like, ever. You’ve always been… smooth.” God, she hopes that’s not weird to say.

Luka flicks his gaze her way. “Then, do you think I don’t really like you?”

“Uh—” Marinette stiffens. “N-no, no, I… I think that if you do, you’re just really good at hiding your nerves.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.” He pauses, but only long enough to gently flick her forehead. “‘Do not mistake composure for ease.’”

She doesn’t know what he’s quoting, but she scrunches up her nose in a pout anyway. Luka only smiles and goes back to playing. And whatever song it is, it must be pink, because it resonates, vibrates, somewhere inside her, until she’s scooting closer and semi-huddling for warmth against the river breeze and reaching for the mille-feuille. “I hope you’ll take me there again,” she says in between bites, sometimes licking powdered sugar or custard off her thumb. It’s almost as good as the ones her father makes, but nothing will ever quite measure up, bias be damned. “I hope I get to hear you play for all those people.”

Luka raises an eyebrow, and the music fades over the water. “Are you asking me on a second date?”

She blinks a couple of times, and swallows hard, and shifts in her seat, unable to look at him. “I might be. If you want me to be.”

“I want you to be,” he says, soft enough that he could be speaking to himself but loud enough that she can hear him anyway.

“I—” That’s all the effort she can expend to hold anything back; if she can come out and tell Chat Noir everything she did, then Luka’s even less of a floodgate to crumble. She ends up laughing breathlessly, and running a hand through her hair, still looking away when she comes out and says, “I’ve been thinking about so many things.”

“I can tell.” Luka smiles more to himself than her, and makes no fuss in strumming out an easygoing melody. “Talk to me.”

Marinette can’t tell if it’s the music, or the way he talks to her, or the way he must know her heart so well, but he practically draws out the words from her, pulls her in with nothing but an occasional look and the music he makes. She moves closer still, until her knees are bumping against his, until she could reach out and feel the buzz and twang of every note under her fingertips if she wanted to. She won’t; she only settles for drumming her fingers against her knees, even if sometimes she’s thinking about touching his instead. “I’m glad you don’t consider last time a first date, because you deserve better than that.”

“Better than what?” he asks, so incredibly casual even as he’s so fixated on the strings of his guitar.

“Than…” She sets her dessert, half-eaten, back into the box, and busies herself with her thumb between her teeth to at least make it look like she’s gathering her words. Even if she knows they’ll spill out with reckless abandon. “Than asking you to come along because I agreed to something I couldn’t decide if I wanted to go to, and making you feel like an afterthought, or like maybe I didn’t feel a certain way for you because of how I was around Adrien—and I’m sorry—”

“Marinette,” he says gently, letting the music echo away.

And she hears him, sure, but she can’t stop talking. “I’m sorry for flipping in the air so much, and not knowing which side of the coin I wanted—”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about—”

“A-and I like you,” she hiccups, and she really hopes this mascara she decided to try out is as waterproof as Rose claimed. “I really do, and I don’t get feelings—like, I have them, but I don’t _understand_ them when they come and go, or why they’re like this and why they confuse me even when I think I’ve got everything straight. And, I-I want to go on a second date with you, and maybe even a third one—”

“Marinette—”

“I want to hear more of your music, and I want you to take me back to the café so I can see you on that stage, maybe, even if the pastries are nothing like my dad’s—”

“I hear you, but—”

“I’m not even thinking about the hamsters, oh my God—”

And then he’s taking her chin in his hand, one hand still on the neck of his guitar, and he’s leaning in so close that she forgets how to breathe, and her eyes cross and her vision swims when she tries to look at him head-on. “Marinette,” he murmurs again, his gaze dropping down to her lips, and he kisses her. And she doesn’t know how time manages to slow down within seconds, or how he can silence her so easily and so politely all at once. All she knows is that his eyes are still open, just barely, when she finally lets hers shut.

Her eyes are still closed when he pulls away, and she can feel him hovering, lingering, pulsing, thriving, even with the guitar still in his lap.

“Do you…” His breath hitches, and she feels it as much as she hears it. He’s talking so quietly between them, but his words are so loud she’d swear she could hear them from home. “Do you understand now?”

He’s watching her so pointedly when her eyes flutter open again, just enough to see the outlines of him in the night. His teeth sink into his lip like maybe he regrets doing anything, and as much as she wants him to regret it a little less, it’s worth the way she tenses and commits the expression to memory. She could see this a little more often. But she’s so close to toppling forward, and she has to ground herself with her hands on the lapels of his jacket. “I think so,” she whispers, “but I want to be sure.”

So he leans in a second time, and a third, with little time to waste on overthinking or laughing, and she wishes to God he could multitask so he didn’t have to pry her hands away and spend so many seconds zipping up his guitar. But when he comes back to her, when he cradles her face in his hands and wraps his arm around her waist and doesn’t dare pull apart from her in the dark, he kisses her exactly how she knows how to love. How he knows how she loves. He gives and gives and gives and lets her let it consume her from head to toe.

She thinks, as her scalp tingles with how deeply she feels it all, that it’s the most selfless and selfish thing Luka’s ever done, and he’s the only one who knows how to balance it.

Luka must have powdered sugar and whatever light lipstick she put on smudged across his mouth when he lets go, and he still has his hands in her hair, and he’s so breathless for someone who kissed her like he needed it to live. “O-oh,” is all she manages to say, with her fingers brushing against her lips. And she’s stammering.

“Yeah,” he whispers back, half-dazed, and he bumps his forehead to hers. “Oh.”

She shifts, still in his grip, so awfully grateful that she left her hair mostly down in the end. “Luka?”

“Mm?”

“What…” She swallows hard, and presses her hand to his chest; under her palm, his heart is thundering, wild and erratic for someone so calm. Composed, and not at ease, just like he said. “What do you hear now?”

Luka laughs, without noise, and drops his head onto her shoulder. “I hear you, Marinette,” he says, only for her ears. “I hear everything.”

**Author's Note:**

> I have a [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/omnistruck) and a [Tumblr](http://voltisubito.tumblr.com); follow me there for more shenanigans! Feel free to leave comments and stuff in my askbox as well c: 
> 
> Thank you so much!!! I hope you're having a lovely day <3


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